Historic Deerfield has
added the only known Hadley single-drawer table to its
collection.
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from around the World
A federal judge has given final approval to a
$537 million settlement of lawsuits brought by customers
of Sotheby's and Christie's auction houses in a
price fixing case. U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan had
withheld final approval for several weeks because the deal
blocked people from being able to sue in U.S. courts for auctions
that occurred overseas. But in granting approval April 13, Kaplan
told Larry Neumeister of AP the settlement was "fair, reasonable
and adequate" because lawyers agreed that suits stemming from
auctions abroad would be allowed unless an appeals court decides
otherwise. Steven Alan Reiss, a lawyer for Sotheby's, said
payments from the settlement could go to customers of the auction
houses within months if there are no additional legal challenges
to the approved deal.
One of the FBI's greatest catches is safe in the Baseball Hall
of Fame after agents recovered four priceless
baseballs stolen from Cooperstown, N.Y., reports Michael
Gormley of the Associated Press. FBI agents said they traced the
possessors of the four balls signed by presidents William Howard
Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover through
auction houses. The trail led all the way back to pitching great
Walter "Big Train" Johnson, who got them signed. But despite the
efforts of FBI agents and unreleased information gleaned through
a grand jury, agents said April 12 that anyone who ran afoul of
the law of possession of stolen property will not be charged. "We
can't make a criminal case," said FBI Special Agent Michael
Bassett. He said the evidence collected isn't strong enough
despite work on the case since late 1999 after a descendant of
Johnson recognized one of the baseballs in an auction catalog.
Police have solved the burglary of 11 rare pieces of
Hopi pottery from San Diego's Museum of Man one year
ago, but the artifacts remain missing. Police believe a
30-year-old drug user committed the first burglary in the
museum's history in January 2000, police Sgt. Joe Wood told the
Associated Press April 13. Investigators have questioned the man
and were seeking a warrant for his arrest. Police originally
thought an art theft ring was behind the break-in, but talk on
the street led them to a local methamphetamine addict. When the
burglar failed to sell the artifacts, he dumped them in the
bushes near a Mira Mesa elementary school sometime between June
and August, he said. The objects have since disappeared and
police are seeking the public's help in finding them. Ten of the
pieces were made between the 1960s and 1980s by descendants of
the famous Hopi Indian artist Nampeyo, who helped start the
Southwest art movement in the Nineteenth Century. The tan clay
pieces are painted with stark designs in red, orange and black.
The other piece was made in 1915 by the late Maria Martinez of
New Mexico's San Ildefonso pueblo. She is known for her
black-on-black pottery.
The Earl Spencer -via Sotheby's press office -
announced his decision to postpone the auction of
the contents of the attics at Althorp. The sale,
originally scheduled for June, will now be rescheduled for the
spring of 2002. "Given the grave concerns about the spread of
foot and mouth disease and the impossibility of predicting
when the situation will improve, my most important priority right
now must be to ensure that Althorp can safely open to the public
as scheduled on July 1," said Spencer. "As the preparations for
the auction and for the sale itself would take up most of the
month of June, I am concerned that these activities might
jeopardize the public exhibition."
At Sotheby's on January 19, Historic Deefield's executive
director Donald R. Friary, with the assistance of Americana
dealer Leigh Keno, added the only known example of a Hadley
carved drawer table to the western Massachusetts museum
collection. Made around 1700 within a few miles of Deerfield, the
table passed through the hands of the late New Hampshire antiques
dealer Roger Bacon nearly 20 years ago to private collectors who
consigned it to Sotheby's for the 2001 Americana sales. The
carved drawer table will be on view beginning this spring in The
Museum's Attic at the Flynt Center of Early New England Life. The
table, featured in a 1941 article in Magazine Antiques,
was then in the collection of B.A. Behrend of Wellesley, Mass.
Single, large dovetails join the drawer sides to the front and
rosehead nails secure them on the back. Channels for the slides
on which the drawer is side-hung cut through the dovetails. The
slides overlap the leg posts and are nailed into grooves cut into
these posts. The drawer bottom is made of three thin, pine boards
butted with double-rabbeted joints. Atypically for tables of this
type, horizontal rails are absent both above and below the
drawer. The table's top consists of a single pine board
originally pegged to the tops of the leg posts. A later coat of
red paint now graces the table.
Neuberger Museum of Art Board member Marc Ginzberg and his
wife Denyse have donated a rare African knife and sheath
to the Purchase, N.Y. museum. The work is attributed to an artist
from the Bane, an ethnic subgroup of the Fang peoples in southern
Cameroon and northern Gabon. The knife has a finely sculpted wood
haft in the form of a head with inlaid bead eyes, a backswept
coiffure with linear diagonal incisions, and metal neck rings.
Below the head, the cylindrical part for the haft features
incised designs in the shape of two hands on one side and an
animal on the other. The exceptional craftsmanship and elaborate
materials of the knife and sheath suggest a function more
ceremonial that utilitarian. In its original context, the knife
was likely used as an insignia of membership in a local
professional association. Ceremonial knives from this area may
also function in a funerary context, serving as a grave marker
upon the death of its owner. Works attributed to the Bane are
rarely seen in museum collections, and this particular work
complements the Neuberger Museum of Art's already strong
collection of central African art. The Bane knife and sheath will
be displayed in July at part of the reinstallation of the
museum's permanent collection of African art.
The Smithsonian Institution wants to be linked with
two Arizona facilities: the relatively new Challenger Space
Learning Center and the planned Robert McCall Museum of
Art. In announcing the proposal on April 13, Smithsonian
officials said the affiliation would allow the centers to draw on
Smithsonian exhibits. The Smithsonian has 64 such affiliates in
23 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Five are in
southern Arizona. Scottsdale sought one unsuccessfully in 1997.
